Realism: Invictus is the Beyond the Sword version of the Civilization 4 mod that was formerly known “Total Realism” when it was being developed for Warlords expansion pack of Civilization 4. Our mod has been with Civ since the earliest days; it was, back when it was called just “Realism”, among the first comprehensive modpacks seeking to rebalance the game. For over a decade now, the mod continues its life and its evolution.
For detailed statistics on what the mod adds, please check the features section.

After two more years since 3.3, and well over a decade of total development time, Realism Invictus 3.4 is finally here. This version is close to what we consider the final vision of our mod, and it is likely that further updates will only have bug fixes and minor features.

Full Installer

Light Installer

Realism Invictus 3.4

Dear friends, I am very glad to present yet another version of our mod. After over a decade of development, we can say that, in terms of features, content and balance, we have something that is close to final version of Realism Invictus. What has changed compared to 3.3 two years ago?

Global Features

Introduced scaling of technology costs with the number of cities. Scaling is dependent on map size, and ranges from +8% to +20% cost per city (for giant and tiny maps respectively).

Dynamic leader-specific city naming. Each leader now has their own accurate city name list, and civilizations conquering others’ cities will now rename them whenever appropriate. Barbarian cities now take into account what civs are present in game – for instance, there will be no “Magyar” in games with Hungarian civ present.

Both tech cost scaling and unit cost scaling can now be turned off in game options (not recommended, as the mod is balanced for these options turned on, so both units and techs will be too cheap; but possible nonetheless).

Raging Barbarians now off by default. Can be turned back on if nostalgic for pre-3.4 soul-crushing endless barbarian hordes experience.

Tweaked Slavery/Serfdom rebellions to be less annoying. Rebellions now happen less frequently, but usually produce a big stack of rebels (the bigger the city, the more rebels can spawn). Rebels now usually have city attack AI and rarely pillage.

Slaves can now be captured from barbarians as well (and yes, from rebel slaves!), but the total probability is brought down from 25% to 20%.

Civilizations

Berber Civilization now fully playable, with its own set of leaders, units and other necessities.

Units and buildings of barbarian civilization overhauled almost completely.

Barbarians now can see spies, no longer is a spy the best explorer for New World or a risk-free fogbuster.

China and South China no longer clones of each other; they have significantly different unit rosters, some new NUs, and generally play like two different civs.

Adjusted the colors of several civs (South China, Vikings, Austronesia, Hungary) to better stand out against others.

Scenarios

New scenario, Deluge, focusing on Eastern Europe in XVII-XVIII centuries.

Added Celts to Huge World Map, removed Netherlands.

Many resources added, moved or removed on World Maps.

Austronesia should no longer passively turtle up in one city on World Maps.

Replaced Sigurd and Gandhi with Ragnar and Asoka respectively on World Maps.

Removed City State research bonus; due to tech scaling, they are able to keep up on their own.

In scenarios that use them, Tribal Forts are now significantly weaker.

There are no more generic "chiefs" or "kings" on the World Maps - all civs, even minors, have proper historical personas as their leaders.

Updated the Triassic map to include latest civs (Hungarians, Mayans, Berbers) and made some other tweaks to it.

Reworked Earth Evolution script to have all RI-specific features by default (and also to place them better when randomized).

A new separate version of Earth Evolution based on RI Large World Map (it is exactly the same size as the map used before, but has a different feel to it).

Orthodox churches no longer provide a flat +1 gold, but rather a 5% gold bonus (still available only in scenarios).

Units

Unit roles: now different unit classes within a single role share and affect each others’ increased production costs. This eliminates the wild swings for upgrade costs in most cases, as most units upgrade to a unit of the same role.

Unit upgrades now cheaper in general (reduced production to gold ratio).

New unit line: Foreign-trained troops. Require no technology, but access to certain resources (you can now buy arms abroad and build troops your tech doesn’t allow you to build or supply arms to third-world countries yourself).

New unit class: WW2 Mobile AA. Upgrades to Early Mobile SAM.

New unit class: Early Mobile SAM. Upgrades to Mobile SAM.

New unit class: Anti-tank Infantry. Upgrades from Bazooka.

Separated Zeppelin from Early Bombers to become a World Unit.

AA Infantry is now Point Defense Infantry, providing both its earlier AA capability and defensive abilities of Machine Guns. Machine Guns now upgrade to it.

Removed Stealth Destroyer unit class. There are still only 3 of those around in the world IRL, with no further production planned.

Russian NU Katyusha no longer upgrades to regular mobile artillery, but to an improved version of itself (stats-wise very close to Mobile Artillery, so mostly an aesthetic update).

Spies now limited to 3 per civ.

Workers and settlers can no longer be captured.

Combat bonuses of all militias halved.

Woodsman promos now work on attack as well as on defense; a fully promoted Woodsman unit should have a bonus instead of a penalty when attacking an unpromoted unit in the woods.

Terrain and Improvements

Ice on water can now not only grow, but also disappear (with equal probabilities, so there should no longer be a creeping ice age in all games).

Changed how cultivation works: Each cultivation type has a random chance each turn to produce the corresponding resource if it's in a civ's cultural borders, no matter if it's worked or not. When a cultivation spawns a resource, both the improvement and the fertile soil tile feature is removed, effectively turning it into a normal resource tile.

Resources in jungles can now be improved with Iron Working or earlier in some cases.

Mechanized farm has 1 less base food.

Reduced the amount of commerce provided by NIs of Armenians, Mongols, Nguni, Turks, Poles by 1 (in case of Armenians that +1 was dependent on Nomadism, in case of Poles on Serfdom).

Significantly tweaked PlotLSystem; cottages-villages-towns now have the same building size as cities, and properly clustered instead of dispersed buildings. Farm buildings much smaller, farm plots also smaller, but sprawl more.

Cities sprawl a lot less, resulting (together with the above tweak) in a much cleaner landscape.

Resources

Stone is now Limestone (no more wondering "is marble not a stone?"). Uses of Limestone resource expanded from merely construction material to an important part of modern industry. Spawns in greater numbers than before.

New resource: Masonry materials. No longer does Brick Factory (now Brick Kiln) produce Stone! Masonry Materials replace old Stone resource in most uses and are made by Stonecutters from Limestone, by Brick Kilns with Coal, or by Cement Factories.

New resource: Cement. Cement is essential for construction of most late-game buildings. Some require it outright, some are just very costly without it.

New resource: Fertilizer. Produced by Fertilizer Factory, improves food yields.

New resource: Aluminum. Yeah, it really is. Vanilla Aluminum that spawned on map is now Bauxite, and has to be processed, like all other metals. Alumina Refineries make Aluminum from Bauxites and Coal using lots of electricity. Aluminum now required (in raw form or made into Rockets) for all jet-powered aircraft.

New resource: Fabric. Fabric is used for Clothes (with Dye) and Furniture (with Timber).

New resources: Black Powder, Semi-Automatic Firearms and Assault Rifles, each with their own production facilities. Required to construct units of appropriate eras. No longer are early gunpowder units built from Sulfur!

All resources now correctly assigned categories, so that zoomed out resource category filters now work once more.

Extensively reworked resource placement on random maps. Should now generally place more, should be much less cases of certain resources missing, some resources can now be found in a wider variety of terrains.

Gems now revealed with Aesthetics.

Coffee now revealed with Ritual.

Wonders

New world wonder: Great Bath of Mohenjo-Daro.

New civic-dependent world wonder: Magna Carta.

Removed civic dependency from some wonders (Hanseatic League no longer requires Craft Guilds, Grand Arsenal no longer requires Merchant Families), and removed some civic-dependent limited buildings (in Government category mostly) from the game entirely.

University of Sankore now only provides +1 research per religious building.

Alamut now additionally provides 1 free spy specialist, Commando promo to units built in that city.

Angkor Wat now built with Church Architecture, obsoleted with Enlightenment. No longer built as a ruined (modern) version of itself; turns into "modern" look in industrial era. More expensive. Provides +1 gold to all state religion buildings. All in all, a more powerful, yet later and short-lived wonder

Great Library now obsolete with Education

Great Lighthouse now obsolete with City Rights

Great Lighthouse now has prerequisites that are less confusing at a glance (still technically the same, but it now outright says that you need Shipbuilding to build it)

Leonardo's Workshop now also gives +1 research to workshops. Workshop improvements also carry on to Manufactories (as Labor Specialization can be the very next tech researched after Scientific Experiment).

Buildings

Added National Art Gallery as the default Hermitage (Hermitage proper now flavor for Russia); in addition to +100% culture, it now provides +4 gold for each great work of art in your civ (tourist revenues).

Markets, Airports and Fairs, on the other hand, now raise epidemic chances.

Canned food factories now give +2 food to the city.

Fertilizer Factories no longer improve only local cities. Now Fertilizer is a global resource that improves farm and plantation production through Agronomy Stations (former Farming Cooperatives, previously a rather ad-hoc building has now found its purpose).

Textile mills no longer produce Clothes, but Fabric.

Siege workshop provides an engineer slot.

Trading post and Fair provide merchant slots.

Storyteller circle set to 3 per civ and never discontinue (still obsoleted by schools). Now more in line with Weaver and Potter.

Glassworks now provide 2 gold.

Glassworks now require Pottery Shops (you could build Glassworks in different cities while keeping Potters).

Jeweller now available with Aesthetics.

Levee is now a fresh water source (since it requires rivers, this only impacts hill cities that can now supply fresh water to surrounding tiles).

Manufactory and Machine Tools Factory now provide more raw production, to make upgrading to them slightly more attractive.

Culture-specific flavor art for Castles.

Many buildings added by RI have their own construction sounds now.

Archery range now discontinued with Flintlock (was obsoleted), obsoleted with Military Thought (needed for some civs' advanced horse archers).

Tweaked a lot of interface scale to better display buildings in pedia.

Building XML reordered for a more logical layout of city build screen.

All great scientific works provide much more research (+50% for classical, +40% for all the rest except late industrial and modern giving +30%), but go obsolete (at the next scientific era from the one that discontinues them; so classical obsolete when renaissance become available etc.; last two obviously never go obsolete).

New flavor form of Solar Cult - worship of Amaterasu, valid for Japan, Chinese civs and Korea. Full complement of buildings, missionary etc. Functionally identical to base religion.

Leaders and AI

Tens of new leaders added and many existing ones tweaked (202 playable leaders now in total). Every possible trait combo now covered by at least one leader.

Brought back diplo-vassalizations. This fixes "colonies revolt instantly" issue and allows people to once more release colonies as intended.

AI will be much more confident in itself and will only peace-vassalize if doing really poorly.

Overhauled the various victory type priorities for all leaders to be more in line both with their IRL personalities and their in-game strengths.

AI is now much better at judging which civics are useful under which circumstances.

Removed suicidal disregard for enemy power from African tribals and Sibir.

Generally lowered acceptable power threshold to declare a war for all AI leaders (most leaders should now have less suicidal wars - except leaders specifically geared towards extreme behaviour - and be less inclined to march to the other side of the map to attack someone)

Decreased AI enthusiasm for building units in general (though more war-oriented leaders will still build more than others)

Some AI leaders will now be much more random when deciding if they like other AI leaders or not (has no impact on AI-player relations)

Most AIs will now actually dislike someone far ahead of them in score (the mechanic was in place even in vanilla, but mostly didn't work due to the way how rounding was handled by the engine)

AI should now be more picky when founding cities (adjusted the minimum city spot value upwards by 50%).

Defensive pacts disabled, as they led to permanent peace between all AIs almost immediately upon availability.

Fixed a long-standing bug with many previously added models that inflated their size by about 50%. Generally applied lots of fixes to reduce the weight of models and the amount of video memory used for textures.

Leaders without specific greetings will now use a generic one; no more errors for missing greetings.

Ok, i have a small question, i downloaded the rhye's world map to try to play an arcade world map and edit it, but the crash when it starts. Is there a way to fix it or is there another Blank world map compatible with Realism Invictus that i could use?

There is no easy way to use premade maps with this mod. Firstly, they will crash if you don't add the required number of teams (even if they are empty); check some bundled scenarios for that. Secondly, these maps will lack the resources added by the mod, unless they are specifically told to randomize resources or if you place those by hand. Also, you should probably just check EarthEvolution scripts that come bundled with 3.4, if you just want to play on any empty Earth map.